


tethered

by helena3190



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-15 22:02:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29443056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/helena3190/pseuds/helena3190
Summary: Anthology series of rivamika one-shots and drabbles. Each chapter may have unique tags. Includes works for rivamikaevents' A Year to Remember prompts.tethernounteth·er | \ ˈte-t͟hər  \Definition of tether1a: a line (as of rope or chain) by which something is fastened so as to limit where it can gob: a line to which someone or something is attached (as for security)// The horse had been tethered to a post.2: the limit of one's strength or resources// I'm at the end of my tether.
Relationships: Levi Ackerman & Mikasa Ackerman, Mikasa Ackerman/Levi
Comments: 18
Kudos: 64





	tethered

**Author's Note:**

> Hey everyone! As I'm determined to participate in every rivamikaevents' A Year to Remember monthly prompts as a way to challenge myself, I thought I would designate one set space for them. Also, I have so many rivamika head canon writings and drabbles from before I finished reading the manga that feel decidedly out of date, but I'll eventually add them here, too. (: 
> 
> Much love,  
> Helena xo

_**Reservations** _

Summary: Mikasa forgets it’s the fourteenth of February. Modern AU. Rated M to be safe. Rivamika. Background relationships. Written for the prompt _Valentine's_ by [rivamikaevents](https://rivamikaevents.tumblr.com/) for A Year to Remember. Cross-posted from [my tumblr](https://helena-thessaloniki.tumblr.com/post/643125420160647168/reservations). 

* * *

It reeks of varnish and lemon zest. She tries to lift her face off the edge of the rubber mat, but Annie’s palm shoves beneath her ear, lithe fingers clamped onto her neck.

Mikasa blinks, briefly scanning her surroundings through this horizontal view. Azumabito Fitness is large and cavernous, an open floor plan with industrial ceilings, and the walls are lined with only the best brands of top-tier equipment. But the fluorescent lights above the sparring mat are jarring and mocking. She nearly frowns, temporarily distracted at the thought of renovations and high bay lights.

Then Annie’s heel digs further into her sternum, snapping her back to the present.

Mikasa replays the last ten seconds in her mind, torn between critiquing Annie’s clumsy clutch and complimenting her innovative approach. Once Annie had her pinned down from above, she reached for Mikasa’s throat— that was easy enough to block. Considering it easy had been her mistake, though. Swift as the snake the maneuver was named after, Annie utilized the cobra armbar to snatch her wrist and shove it beneath her head. Knowing better than to leave Mikasa even a split second for an opening, Annie turned both of them down in a continuum of the same movement.

With Mikasa flat on her side, arm still trapped beneath Annie’s strengthening hold, the blonde utilized the momentum to shove her other leg into alignment at the base of Mikasa’s skull. Now trapped in a near-complete armbar from mount, Mikasa wrinkles her nose at the next whiff of oil-based floor wax.

“Going to tap out?” Annie manages to sound bored despite being breathless.

“No,” Mikasa responds evenly, her lips forced to brush against the sweat-stained mat. Then, with mild agitation. “You didn’t learn this from me.”

“No,” Annie admits, completing the maneuver with a hard rock backward, sweeping her other leg over and onto Mikasa’s throat. 

Knowing who she’s up against, Annie doesn’t opt to restrain her strength. She keeps Mikasa’s skull tucked into the base of her thighs, then pulls the length of Mikasa’s arm back with her, straining to hold the other woman into a locked position.

A more-than-halfway-decent submission hold, Mikasa thinks idly. She quickly runs through the short list of who else Annie might be training with in her limited free time.

“You’re spending time with Bertolt again.”

For a second too long, Annie doesn’t answer. It’s only that pause that betrays her otherwise neutral disposition. “So what if I am?”

“He’s married.”

“They’re separated.”

“Fine. What about you and Armi—”

Now Annie yanks her arm in earnest, forcing a cut breath out of Mikasa’s taut frame.

Annie is cold and resolute. “I haven’t asked about your fucked up love life. Don’t interrogate me about mine.”

“It wasn’t an interrogation, it was one question.”

Annie remains silent. Then, with a harsh exhale of her own, she makes a half-hearted demand. “Tap out.”

Mikasa doesn’t dignify that with a response. She prepares to leverage herself out of Annie’s submission hold when the bells on the front door of the gym sound off. It’s a gentle, but intrusive chime considering it is afterhours in a private establishment.

“We’re closed,” Mikasa calls out primly, albeit muffled from the mat and Annie’s fingertips smashed into her cheek.

She tries to dig her heels in to shove out from Annie, but the blonde only rearranges her thighs to tighten the hold.

Mikasa relaxes some, thinking of the other half of Annie’s sentiment. Annoyed, she asks. “Who said my love life is fucked up?”

Annie sucks in a tense breath, her azure eyes lit with a rare spark of amusement. “Seeing as its seven o’clock at night on Valentine’s Day and you’re here with me instead of your husband—…”

“Oh,” Mikasa murmurs, lanced with an epiphany. _Oh no._

She inhales, as if summoning a faraway element of decisiveness and breathing it back into her frame. Then Mikasa reaches for the hand Annie’s yanked back, interlocking her fingers between both hands, and roughly pulls them back toward her chest. Annie mutters a violent _shit—_ but it’s too late. 

Despite Annie’s exerting strength to hold on, Mikasa leverages her bicep to tuck it beneath Annie’s forearm, and then swiftly unlaces her fingers. That’s all it takes. 

Fast as lightning, Mikasa uses the few inches of created space to snag Annie’s wrist and release her own arm. From there, she tucks her elbow inward and slams her freed arm down to the ground. The blunt _smack_ onto the mat preambles her final release maneuver, shifting her legs and launching into Annie’s guard.

Despite a swift attempt by Annie to put space between them, Mikasa no longer leaves room for error. She straddles Annie and begins to shove into her chest. Annie makes a sincere effort to block, but that’s what Mikasa planned for; she goes dead-weight, thus enabling her weightless limbs to slide up and around Annie’s throat. Once her thighs are secure, Mikasa leans her hips inward and swings her external leg out and over, claiming Annie’s throat and rocking back with her arm.

Annie groans. In less than five seconds, Mikasa has trapped her with an old-fashioned straight armbar.

It’s her turn to reflect on mistakes. “I should have used a finger-four grip on your wrist.”

“Should have,” Mikasa agrees curtly.

Now that her opponent is secure in her own submission hold, Mikasa remembers her impetus for swapping their positions.

The night prior, amidst utter exhaustion and remnants of an orgasmic daze, Levi had brushed loose strands of hair from her sweat-coated skin and murmured into her ear. Not the usual, but not out of the ordinary either, he told her to meet him at Sophia’s Ristorante Italiano at six thirty the next day. She had asked him why, lids fluttering to a close. He had scoffed. “ _Why?_ Because I made reservations.”

He failed to mention reservations at a place like Sophia’s on a day like the fourteenth of February would have required scheduling several months in advance. 

Mikasa nearly sighs aloud.

“We have dinner reservations,” Mikasa says, more to herself than to Annie. “I think I’m late.” 

She forgot about the chimes on the door and a possible intrusion. The solemn words from a third person in the gym sound off from her blind spot at the edge of their sparring mat.

“Yes, we do.” Levi says, partially but not completely committed to irritation. “And yes, you are.”

With a snap, Mikasa looks over to her side. She keeps Annie’s arm secure, but rearranges her shoulders and lifts her chin further up to get a better view of him. Seeing through horizontal vision again, Mikasa appraises him.

It’s been awhile since she’s seen him like this. Dressed sharply, a three-piece navy suit designed by some atrociously expensive Italian fashion house, but tailored to fit him with such precision she is less inclined to judge. Logically, she knows Levi must look like this daily; their shared closet is filled to the brim with his similarly elegant items. But with his insomnia and their mismatched work schedules, she ordinarily returns home once he’s changed into loungewear and she always wakes up in the mornings after he’s already left.

Tracking the sharp cut of material over his hips to the broad length of his shoulders, Mikasa licks her lips.

He pauses; her appreciation isn’t going unnoticed. But Levi only responds by lifting a partial brow.

“You forget?”

“No,” Mikasa says, honest. “But you’re always late when you come from the office. I assumed six-thirty would turn into eight.”

Levi’s lids fall to half-mast. He looks as if he considers being irked by this but realizes since she’s right, he probably isn’t allowed to be.

“Yeah, well, not on Valentine’s Day,” he mutters, somewhat reluctantly.

“Sorry,” she says, sheepish.

“I’m still here,” Annie interrupts dispassionately, then mutters something that sounds suspiciously like _you fucking_ _twats._

Mikasa shifts her vision back to Annie. Her soft smile disappears, and in its place there’s a lethal severity. “Tap out.”

Annie remains silent, narrowing her cold blue eyes in the opposite direction.

“Annie,” Mikasa warns lowly, tightening her armbar in a manner that reveals the previous hold had been lax at best. 

Annie makes a garbled choking noise, stubborn to the end. It’s half a moment later when she finally rests her arm, knocking her knuckles onto the mat two times. Mikasa releases her at once.

Both women shift to their knees and stand on their own. Annie reaches for her nearby towel and water, sparing Levi a cursory glance.

“Ackerman,” she greets absently.

“Leonhart.”

Annie turns to Mikasa, her reddened cheekbones and actively perspiring skin a contrast to her otherwise flat disposition. “Same time tomorrow?”

Mikasa nods, simultaneously a response and a farewell. Annie nods too, rubbing the towel against her shoulder and walking toward the gym’s exit.

For better or for worse, Mikasa tends to be impulsively overprotective. She finds herself calling out to Annie, surprising even herself with the earnestness. 

“Armin would have made you dinner tonight.”

Annie turns back slowly, if only to level her with a visceral glare. “Well, I’m only in the mood for dessert.”

Mikasa sighs, but makes no further comment. Annie resumes her exit as if she’d never been interrupted.

“Is she referring to tiramisu,” Levi wonders aloud, watching the door close behind Annie and then turning toward Mikasa. “Or Hoover?”

“Bertolt,” Mikasa confirms warily, searching for her own towel and water.

“He’s married.”

“They’re separated.”

“But Arlert—”

“I know.” Mikasa frowns, lifting her neck to towel it off. “She can be a stone-cold bitch.”

He lobs the next part like an insult. “She’s your best friend.”

Mikasa glares at him with feigned offense. “What does that say about me?”

“All one needs to know,” Levi answers thinly, the left corner of his mouth vying to smirk.

“Hm.” Similarly, Mikasa tries not to smile. She drains what was left of her water in one go.

With the joking finished and Annie no longer present, the atmosphere between them shifts. Mikasa turns serious, placing her water bottle back onto the floor and finishing what she started earlier. It’s not just the austere navy of his smart attire, darkening his steel gray irises to an icy blue. There’s the additional accessory; or rather, jewelry.

His military contract work, obsessive cleaning tendencies, and personal fitness regime ordinarily require the substitution of silicon. Currently though, with his arms folded leisurely across his chest, she studies the polished shine of his platinum wedding band resting atop his forearm.

He must have put it on for dinner. The dinner reservations she missed.

Mikasa takes the first step toward him, an honest frown. “I’m late.”

“Very,” Levi remarks dryly. “You know, I’ve never been stood up before.” 

She takes another step, entering his personal space. “Anyone notice?”

Thanks to Erwin’s ridiculous memoir that included regaling accounts of wartime heroics, their old Commander had been launched into the political limelight. An unfortunate and entirely accidental consequence was the general public _also_ developing a patriotic fondness for the Ackerman couple mentioned throughout his book. Medal-worthy soldiers from different ranks, star-crossed lovers, who fell for one another while serving in active combat during the harrows of wartime— at least, that’s how the sensationalized journalists and avid paparazzi continue to phrase it. 

Levi’s arms drop to his sides with a gravelly huff. “Oh, it’ll be on Page Six.”

Mikasa considers the potential headlines. _Beloved War Heroes in Crisis— Ackerman Abandoned by Reclusive Wife._ Her lips twitch in effort not to laugh at the inane possibilities. While Levi’s close association with Erwin’s prominent political agenda has kept him securely in the spotlight too, she’s chosen to run a small business in her family name and assiduously avoid all of the unwanted attention.

“I’m sorry,” she murmurs, failing to entirely hide the mirth from her apology.

Conscientious of her sweat-stained skin and his expensive suit fabric, she skims a careful touch over his lowered wrist.

“I’ll rush to shower and change,” she says, more seriously, and starts to turn toward the back of the gym. “I brought a dress.”

But she’s surprised when Levi stops her, calloused fingertips wrapping firmly around her elbow. “Which dress?”

Mikasa stills. Captivated first by his rough hand, a more authentic representation of him compared to the silken attire, and then by his tone, low and mild with a devious sort of curiosity.

“The little black one,” she answers, slowly turning back toward him. Her wardrobe is far more limited than his, and despite Historia’s protests, she’s not opposed to wearing the same thing twice. “The one from New Years.”

Levi hums a quiet but obvious disinterest, to which Mikasa immediately frowns.

“You like that dress,” she reminds him, lavender-dusted irises sparking with indignation.

“I like _you_ in that dress,” he corrects her, but still, he’s blithe and disinterested.

Mikasa only understands once his hold shifts, fingers spreading out across the tender skin beneath her forearm as he pulls her back toward him.

Whereas she hasn’t seen him dressed fully to the nines in several weeks, Levi has not seen her like this, toned muscles of bare skin glistening from perspiration, curves filled into the flattering shape of well-fitted black athletic-wear. In a predatorily manner, he rakes his eyes over her sweat-soaked frame, lingering on the dip of her hipbones, on the droplets of sweat slipping between her breasts.

The spark in her irises swiftly changes from indignation to something else entirely.

Levi lifts his left hand to cater to the hollow of her neck. There’s a hungry intent in his visage that’s at odds with his gentle movement. Mikasa hums despite herself, the rough pads of his fingers coasting over sensitive skin before perching onto her clavicle. 

“I like this more,” Levi finishes, belatedly but not without resolution. 

He flattens his hand out onto the left side of her chest, fingertips beneath her collarbone and palm resting heavily onto her breast. She’s surprised to feel her nipple already hardened beneath his touch, though supposes she shouldn’t be. It had been this _look_ that called her body to attention even before he lifted a hand.

“This?” Mikasa repeats brazenly, greedy for more.

Levi’s gaze flickers from her parted lips to the strap of her sports bra. He slides his hand beneath the fabric, guiding it slowly over to the side and then off her shoulder. Mikasa shivers, the metal from his ring cold and smooth as it glides over her.

He steps closer, dipping down to claim the revealed skin, first with a skimming of his teeth, then with a harsh bite at the top of her shoulder.

Mikasa hisses, clasping his forearm without restraint. Levi continues to hover, his hot breath nestling into the crook of her neck.

“This,” he clarifies pointedly, offering a chaste kiss where his teeth punctured.

Despite one hand still trapped beneath fabric on the side of her shoulder, with his other he takes a sharp hold of her waist and pulls her into him. There’s no space left between them.

Mikasa hums again. Her lids flutter with no longer latent lust, but she forces herself to keep them open. She releases her death grip on his forearm.

“Let me shower,” she says, only partially phrasing it as a question.

She expects to step out and back from him, but Levi doesn’t lighten his hold or lift his mouth off his ascent to her neck. “No.”

Provoked easily, Mikasa straightens. “No?”

She takes a deliberate step back. For a split second she has the satisfaction of seeing his flash of surprise, but it is her mistake for forgetting that he is not part soldier and part husband. He is always and fully both. 

Levi steps forward, conquering the space between them again, and takes no further chances. He easily maneuvers his right foot to the inside of her left ankle and sweeps her legs out from beneath her. Tightening his hold on her and bracing their fall with his forearms, he tosses them squarely onto the sparring mat.

“Shit,” Mikasa mutters darkly, taking an immediate hold onto his biceps, her fingertips digging into rigid muscle. She applies all the strength and force that she has to squeeze harder.

He grunts, but she can’t tell if it’s from the pain or arousal— or both.

When his mouth meets the flesh beneath her collarbone again, it’s less of a kiss and more of a brand. Scraping of teeth and determined suction, marking her unabashedly before changing tactics, sweeping his tongue out with bruising authority. Even four years later, it’s always the pressure of his laving tongue that makes her bite down an inhibited moan.

Once he moves upward, a fiery trail of welt-worthy kisses from the base of her throat to the tender skin beneath her chin, Mikasa finally gives in.

She lets her head fall to the side with a harsh gasp. Her cheek scrapes against the rubber mat, but she’s hardly able to pay it any attention. She relinquishes her punishing hold on Levi’s biceps in favor of grabbing onto his waistline. Decidedly uncaring about the cost of his three-piece suit, she searches for the bottom of his dress shirt and tears it out from his belted waistline.

But then she takes another strangled breath against the sparring mat and is jarred out of lust-filled daze. This close to the floor, Mikasa smells it again. Oil-based varnish and citrus.

With the same decisive determination that enabled her to escape Annie, she gathers her strength and moves with ingrained instinct; leveraging her loose limbs, she shoves Levi’s chest up with just enough room to flip their positions. She pins him immediately, straddling his waistline with firm pressure from her inner thighs, and returns her bruising grip to hold down his arms.

Levi stares up at her, molten silver pooled in the depths of his irises as he waits for her next move. But then he blinks, seemingly aware of the abrupt sobriety in her features.

Mikasa takes a moment to gather her bearings. The tension coiled beneath her abdomen begs her to forfeit concern and cave into their previous momentum.

She just barely loosens her hold on his forearms. “Want to tell me what you were doing last night.”

He doesn’t blink. He doesn’t shift an inch. “Worked out. Made dinner. Fucked you.”

Mikasa lifts a brow, prepared to interrupt him, but then he tilts his head back, overtly smug as he withholds a casual smirk. “Actually, ate you out ‘til you screamed and then fucked you.”

“After that,” she says, without half as much nonchalance as she intended. “After I fell asleep.”

And still he doesn’t blink nor shift. She knows him better than anyone, by now even better than Erwin she thinks, and yet she’d never be able to read it off his body language or current features. If it didn’t tear at her heart, she’d be impressed.

Levi makes a soundless sigh. “Couldn’t sleep.”

“You can’t sleep every night,” Mikasa says quietly, frowning for the first time. “But you make tea, read, go for a run, or clean our house.”

“I did do all that,” he tells her idly.

Mikasa grits her teeth if only for a second. “Then why did you come to the gym, too?” 

This time, he does blink. It is proof enough that she’s caught him, but he doesn’t waver otherwise, and offers no further explanation.

Mikasa lets go of his one arm in favor of reaching for his throat. She wraps her fingers diligently around the tendons beneath his chin and waits to feel him swallow— it’s satisfying, another reason a jolt shoots between her thighs— before turning his face to the side. She’s careful but adamant in pressing his cheek down to the edge of the mat. The tip of his nose is only a few centimeters shy of the hardwood.

“You scrubbed and waxed the floors.”

“ _Tch_.” Levi tosses her an unimpressed glare from his horizontal view. “It wasn’t obvious by the shine when you first walked in? Leonhart had to knock you on your ass for you to _smell_ it?”

But now that she has his confession, she’s disinterested in games. Her hand leaves his throat at once. “What’s wrong?”

Levi stretches his neck and settles back down easily, as if he’s forgotten it’s him in the trapped position. “Nothing’s wrong.”

“You _scrubbed_ and _polished_ my gym floors because you _couldn’t sleep_ last night.”

Though she’s the one who says the words, she grimaces. Mikasa watches Levi track the worry as it flashes over her features. It’s likely the only reason he mutters another _tch_ that sounds less like annoyance and more like reluctance.

“Tell me,” she says quietly, leaning back on her haunches and freeing him completely.

Less affected, ironically but not surprisingly, Levi pulls himself up with ease. With expert hands and years of practice, he reaches for her hips to reposition her onto his lap. Like a ragdoll instead of a warrior, she lets him guide her legs to straddle around him. This time, there’s not an ounce of aggression.

When Levi finishes, he leaves one hand tucked beneath her knee but lifts the other toward her face. He brushes the back of his knuckles over the corner of her mouth.

“It’s nothing to warrant that,” he grunts, eying her downturned lips and accidentally mirroring them.

She just tilts her head, the dust of lavender in her worried gray irises speaking for her.

This time, Levi sighs aloud. He drops his hand back onto her shoulder, but unlike the wild fervor from just a moment ago, his touch is tender. He pushes her displaced strap back into its proper position.

It’s probably only half a moment, but it stretches on for longer in her mind before Levi eventually tells her. “You know I had lunch with Eren and Historia yesterday.”

Mikasa’s mind starts to whirl frantically at once, overwhelmed with potential worries and concerns related to her brother and his pregnant wife. She forgets to nod, but Levi continues without it.

“They asked— …” but then he pauses, forcing himself to be transparent. “Eren asked if I would be the godfather.”

The wheels immediately cease to spin. “ _What_?”

Levi narrows his eyes at her, but he’s only half-suspicious. “You didn’t know?”

Mikasa’s eyes widen further. “N-no. I thought he would ask Armin—…”

A quiet moment passes. In what is ordinarily an absent movement but seems to have more purpose now, Levi traces his thumb across her hipbone, distracting himself by watching the unhurried pace of it. 

“Me too,” he eventually says, almost grumbling. “Said something about if anything ever happens to him and Historia, he’d want the kid to have a two-parent household.”

Mikasa shakes her head, only mildly confused and still stunned. “But they didn’t ask me to be the godmother.”

Levi looks at her bluntly, the same as he did in their younger years.

“Oh,” she says to herself. Then, for sake of clarity, she voices her observation. “Eren knows I’d say yes, so he asked you first, to give you the chance to think it over.”

He nods absently, but she’s unconvinced at his nonchalance. Not when he watches himself glide his thumb over her hip without seeming to actually see the motion. Not with the dismal scent of polypropylene and lemon right beneath them.

Mikasa gingerly reaches for his chin. She allows him to lift his own head, but her touch remains. 

“Tell me,” she says again, bringing her thumb up to rest underneath the corner of his mouth.

Like it’s the last thing he wants to do, but is entirely too used to doing precisely those sorts of things, his lips thin out into a tight line. “Eren deploys next month. Historia ships out after maternity leave. It’s— it’s not just a fucking gesture, they want to have a lawyer who draws up the papers.”

Mikasa already knows these things, but it doesn’t make it easier to be reminded.

“It’s not impossible that something could happen,” she says quietly, capable of speaking it only because of the ambiguity.

His features harden. She can feel the muscles in his jaw as they tighten beneath her grasp. But when Levi places his rough hand firmly atop hers, the weight of it dragging their hands down his neck and into the crook of his shoulder, she realizes it’s not himself he’s worried over. 

Then, Mikasa realizes belatedly, he didn’t tell her yesterday for the same reason. Might not have told her what bothered him about it at all if she hadn’t caught proof of his compulsive cleaning acts.

“Levi,” she sighs, flinching at the unrestrained anguish in her honest breath and then promptly moving on from it. “He asked you first. Don’t— don’t think about me. It’s up to you.”

His hand holding hers tightens exponentially, painfully. She doesn’t wince.

“Don’t think about you?” He repeats angrily, the steel in his gray irises sharpening onto her. “You’re all I think about.”

The violent heat from his searing words burns through the last of her façade; she slumps forward. Her forehead falls onto his and rests there while she vies for self-composure and resolve.

“You know what I mean,” she says quietly, words whispered near his lips. “It’s not just me, Levi. He trusts you more than anyone else.”

There’s only a slight pause of reflection before Levi responds. “Did save his suicidal maniac ass on several occasions.”

She shakes her head minimally, her forehead brushing against his as she does it. “No. He’d trust you with his child more than anyone else.”

Levi is far too close to be able to hide from her. She can sense it when he forgets to breathe, can feel the ragged breath against her cheek a few seconds later.

“He’s always been an idiot.”

“Yes,” Mikasa allows. “But he’s always had the right instincts on which men are the monsters— which men are good.”

“Good?” Levi repeats, an inelegant snort.

“Good,” she insists, lifting her forehead off of him to focus on him clearly. 

Levi is reluctant to meet her gaze, but as he’s placed her directly onto his lap, he’s left himself without other options.

Mikasa drags her other hand up to his neck, using both of her palms to cradle his face, fingertips skimming into the soft hair of his undercut. “ _Good._ You’re a good man. You’d be a goo—”

He visibly flinches before she says it— nostrils flaring infinitesimally, shards of steel glinting harshly in his gray eyes.

This only spurs her onward. Mikasa clutches his face harder, used to the mannerisms in which force and strength have woven themselves into their concept of intimacy. Both her thumbs find a familiar hold on the outside of his mouth, enabling her to lean in and kiss him deliberately, suckling hard on his bottom lip even while he’s unwilling, or unable to respond.

And Mikasa, unwilling or unable to be discouraged, kisses the corner of his immobile mouth next. Thinking of the seven-month swell of her sister-in-law’s belly, and considering Levi’s reservations, she gently kisses the tip of his nose, too.

Levi remains rigid, seemingly unaffected. That’s enough proof for her to know he is anything but.

She gradually shifts up to rest against his forehead again, closing her eyes for his sake more than her own.

“You’d be a good father,” she finishes, a declaration and a promise.

Mikasa is patient for several moments. Eventually, it’s as if he wakes from the dead. It starts with the returning brush of his thumb over and over her hipbone, how it dips lower and digs deeper into more sensitive flesh. Then it’s in the sound of his breathing, normal and constant as opposed to soft and shallow, the hot air ghosting down her throat. His hand beneath her knee roams upward, wrapping around her thigh and clutching hard.

When he presses his forehead against hers, stubborn and strong, she opens her eyes.

“You know he’ll be fine,” Levi tells her evenly, and this time, it’s for her sake. “He’s got better luck than a goddamn cat with nine lives.”

Her lips tremble with a saddened smile. “I know,” she murmurs. Then, with more certainty, “I know.”

The rest goes unsaid. Despite the tense and rocky start when the two men first met overseas, Levi and Eren eventually became as close as brothers; even before a small, simple wedding and government-issued certificate made it official.

Mikasa doesn’t need to ask what Levi decided when waxing the gym floors the night prior. While Levi will talk shit _and_ kick the shit out of Eren when needed, they both know the truth of it. He’d do anything Eren asked of him.

They simply watch each other, holding on tighter due to the weight of it.

Mikasa is not necessarily the best in offering encouragement, but Levi rarely expects or needs it. She opts to break the tension of the somber moment.

“Regardless, let’s hope our nephew takes after his mother,” she offers genially.

Levi is less gracious. “Let’s fucking hope.”

Desire that was temporarily shelved but not dismissed resurfaces with near-violent fervor. As the start of a genuine smile overtakes her, Levi swallows it. The kiss he hadn’t returned earlier, he returns now, claiming her bottom lip with an animalistic tug that makes her moan. Mikasa sinks her nails into his chest, opting to forgo patience, finding his tongue to mold with her own.

Levi rakes his left hand further up her leg, thumb teasing into the apex of her inner thigh, the rest of his fingers palming a strong hold around her bottom. Through the thin fabric of her leggings, she feels the cool metal from his platinum ring as he digs into her ass.

“Wait,” Mikasa demands, pulling back from the start of bliss.

He’s less than enthusiastic to comply, but eyes her with mild curiosity in the few centimeters of space between them.

She twists an arm toward her gym bag situated on the outside edge of the sparring mat. Her outstretched fingertips miss the bag’s wayward strap by half a meter, though. 

Levi grunts and repositions them, sliding back enough to bring himself within arm’s reach of the bag. “What?”

“Left pocket,” she gestures, resting onto his chest while he maneuvers to unzip the pocket she’s designated.

Even if there were other items in the pocket, he would have found it first. While Levi takes out the small, cube-shaped jewelry box, she takes off her silicon band.

It’s the original midnight-blue velvet box from the day he first presented it to her. Levi studies it for several seconds, probably surprised it’s free from dust and still in mint condition. 

Mikasa reaches for it, but with familiar ire, he swats her hand down.

Levi brings the velvet jewelry box into the limited space left between them. She watches his thumb graze over the seam for an additional second, and then he snaps it open.

He could have afforded more, but Levi knew her better than that. It’s plain and unassuming, as far as wedding rings go; a simple, white gold band with a solitaire round-cut diamond. There’s no item in the world worth more to her.

Before she can offer it, Levi takes hold of her left hand. Despite the grime and sweat from her workouts, he slides the band onto her ring finger with delicate care. Once in proper alignment beneath her knuckle, Mikasa straightens her fingers out. He doesn’t let go.

Oblivious to the harshness of fluorescent light, the diamond shines brilliantly from its intended place on her ring finger. 

Levi studies it, too. She can barely hear his quiet words, darkened not by lust but something similar. “When was the last time I told you I loved you.”

The left side of Mikasa’s mouth curves in temptation to smile, but she pauses to think about it. “A few days ago? When Erwin called you in early— I’m not sure, I think I was still half-sleep.”

“You know, though,” he says instead of asks again, rearranging her left hand in his palm. 

His thumb graces the edge of the white gold band, but he stops short of the diamond. As if it’s too precious for his battle-hardened hands to touch.

“I do,” she answers easily, but despite her placid half-smile, it doesn’t seem to convince him. 

Levi tightens his hold over her palm, nearly glaring at her in the short distance between them.

Mikasa takes control of their hands, wrapping her own scarred and battered fingers around his, and answers again. “Every day, even if we don’t see each other.”

Even when he doesn’t say it. 

Levi is still not satisfied. His forehead forcefully knocks into hers, too hard. Teeming with unresolved tension she is at fault for postponing, Mikasa feels the promise of pleasure pulse harder between her thighs.

“Every second of every day?” Now he poses it as a question. 

Mikasa wilts, if only temporarily, before forcing his forehead back with hardened resolve from her own. “Every second.” 

She’s known since the day Levi proposed that she’d never be able to ease all of his self reservations, but it admittedly has not stopped her from trying. 

Before she leans in to kiss him, before she forgets to once they’re fucking, Mikasa turns his palm over in her hand and guides his calloused fingertips directly onto the diamond. 

It’s him, not the stone, that’s more precious.

* * *


End file.
